The Ashes: England ponder the Steve Harmison option

Most of the dissection and speculation in the lead-up to the decisive Ashes
Test at the Oval has been about England's batting.

To pick, or not to pick? England need Steve Harmison at his best, not his worst, to win the AshesPhoto: REUTERS

By Derek Pringle, Cricket Correspondent

7:00AM BST 14 Aug 2009

But taking 20 wickets is a priority in a must-win Test and that is what the selectors will prioritise when they meet at Trent Bridge on Friday to finalise their squad.

Bowling Australia out twice has not looked all that likely this series. Only when Andrew Flintoff went through the sound and pain barrier at Lord's did England manage it, which leaves them with the problem of how they might best achieve it again at the Oval, with their talisman likely to be only 80 per cent fit.

One option for the selectors is to pick Steve Harmison as part of a five-man attack that includes Flintoff, James Anderson, Graeme Swann and Stuart Broad, and hope the pitch possesses that famous Oval pace and carry.

Along with Old Trafford, the Oval has been Harmison's favourite pitch for taking wickets and he has 22 in five Tests there. But while he takes those wickets at 26, almost six runs cheaper than his career average, he concedes more runs per over there than elsewhere.

Another possibility is to pick Monty Panesar alongside Swann and order the groundsman to prepare a dry, turning pitch.

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It is an interesting idea and one, if memory serves, that was also floated before Cardiff, where many presumed England possessed a clear-cut superiority in the spin department. The trouble was Nathan Hauritz, blitzed by Sussex and England Lions in Australia's warm-up games, ending up out-bowling both Swann and Panesar in that match on a surface offering slow turn.

England have won Tests with spin before at the Oval but not in the last 10 years. The pitches there this season have not offered much to anyone except the batsmen, though Middlesex off-spinner Shaun Udal did take eight wickets there in a championship match against Surrey in May, six of them in the second innings.

Then there is Panesar's dreadful form for Northamptonshire. Before the current game against Kent, he had taken just 10 wickets at 64, hardly the kind of figures to guarantee you a berth in England's biggest cricket match for four years.

His new run-up has, according to one former England bowling coach, stopped him from putting the same amount of revolutions on the ball as before, which would explain his reduced spin. Indeed, so alarmed has Bob Cottam become that he has written to the England management to point out the flaw.

Assuming the selectors want to give Andrew Strauss some spin options next week, just in case the pitch is overly dry, one man who is taking wickets with left-arm spin (20 this season), as well as scoring important runs (624 at 44), is Durham's Ian Blackwell.

If discarded Test players such as Mark Ramprakash are to be considered, why not Blackwell? At least his runs and wickets are in the top division.